crowd

English

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kɹaʊd/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -aʊd

Etymology 1

From Middle English crouden, from Old English crūdan, from Proto-West Germanic *krūdan, from Proto-Germanic *krūdaną, *kreudaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *grewt- (“to push; press”). Cognate with German Low German kroden (“to push, shove”), Dutch kruien (“to push, shove”).

Verb

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

  1. (intransitive) To press forward; to advance by pushing.
    The man crowded into the packed room.
  2. (intransitive) To press together or collect in numbers
    Synonyms: swarm, throng, crowd in
    They crowded through the archway and into the park.
  3. (transitive) To press or drive together, especially into a small space; to cram.
    He tried to crowd too many cows into the cow-pen.
  4. (transitive) To fill by pressing or thronging together
    • 1875, William Hickling Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain:
      The balconies and verandas were crowded with spectators, anxious to behold their future sovereign.
  5. (transitive, often used with "out of" or "off") To push, to press, to shove.
    They tried to crowd her off the sidewalk.
    • 2006, Lanna Nakone, Every Child Has a Thinking Style, →ISBN, page 73:
      Alexis's mementos and numerous dance trophies were starting to crowd her out of her little bedroom.
  6. (nautical) To approach another ship too closely when it has right of way.
  7. (nautical, of a square-rigged ship, transitive) To carry excessive sail in the hope of moving faster.
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Lee Shore”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 118:
      With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
  8. (transitive) To press by solicitation; to urge; to dun; hence, to treat discourteously or unreasonably.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

  1. A group of people congregated or collected into a close body without order.
    After the movie let out, a crowd of people pushed through the exit doors.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:
      Athelstan Arundel walked home […], foaming and raging. […] He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them.
    • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →OCLC, page 9:
      He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. […] But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again […] she found her mother standing up before the seat on which she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes, and her father by her side.
  2. Several things collected or closely pressed together; also, some things adjacent to each other.
    There was a crowd of toys pushed beneath the couch where the children were playing.
  3. (with definite article) The so-called lower orders of people; the populace, vulgar.
  4. A group of people united or at least characterised by a common interest.
    That obscure author's fans were a nerdy crowd which hardly ever interacted before the Internet age.
    We're concerned that our daughter has fallen in with a bad crowd.
    • 2015, Cameron Bane, Pitfall:
      Maybe it was time I joined the crowd and bought a few of those for my own office.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Etymology 2

Inherited from Middle English crowde, from Welsh crwth or a Celtic cognate.

Noun

crowd (plural crowds)

  1. (obsolete) Alternative form of crwth
  2. (now dialectal) A fiddle.
Derived terms

Verb

crowd (third-person singular simple present crowds, present participle crowding, simple past and past participle crowded)

  1. (obsolete, intransitive) To play on a crowd; to fiddle.

References

“crowd”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams
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